* Bring in 3 size 24 buttons. What is the diameter of a size 24 button?

* If you buy an $120,000 Boxter Porsche and it depreciates in value by 25% annually, how much will it be worth when it is 1, 2, 3 and 4 years old? More info here.

* In 2012 Usain Bolt had earned $20 million up until the Olympic Games mostly through endorsements. He ran a total of 400m (100 m, 200m and 4x100m relay). How much does the fastest man on earth earn per m and, more interestingly, per second? Why is the relay faster per leg than the 100m sprint?

* An old maths exam paper of a parent or grand parent or a school ruler with their name on it. (Must be old)

* How many large cracked eggs would it take to fill a 50-litre rubbish bin?

* If Usain Bolt could keep up his 100m-sprint speed, how long would it take for him to finish the marathon? How long would it take him to get to school from your place? Include map showing your route to school.

Challenge 3:

The Great Maths Scavenger Hunt

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3.The Great Maths Race

* Make a protractor Anemometer and calculate the current wind speed. Conversion Chart here.

* Bring a sextant

* The Brix number is used to measure sweetness. One degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose in 100 grams of solution. What would the Brix number be for orange juice, Gatorade and coke? You will need to know the sugar content in gm for each drink ( Look here) and the volume of a coke can or bottle.

* Make a poster using maths symbols going off at a tangent.

* Your growth chart for 10-year period.

* Width of the front of the school block in toilet paper sheets. You will find some handy measurements here.

* Bake a π pie

* Cook a Fibonacci cake

* Bring in a mock up poster (in waste paper) of all paper sizes from A8 to A0.

* How much do we spend per person each year on toilet paper? You will find information @ toilet paper fun facts. Yes! There is a Toilet Paper Fun Facts website. We use an average of 57 sheets each per year and, say, a toilet roll has 350 sheets. You will have to price the toilet rolls.

* Prove 1 + 1 = 2 in the most complicated way you can.

* Demonstrate Pythagoras Theorem using Saltine crackers.

* Develop a maths clap chant. Team must teach clap chant to class.

* Make potato stamps of the surds: √2, √3 and √5 and stamp an equation.

* Use bubble gum to demonstrate the parabola to the class of y = x2

* Make an Origami Pentagon from a square

* Make Pascal’s Triangle using jellybeans or rice grains

* If your hair kept growing at the average rate of 0.04 cm per day, how long would it take to reach the same length/height as you? Show calculations.

* Make a poster of Bernoulli’s Triangle 20 lines long.

* The fastest remote controlled car on earth, so they say, is the Traxxas XO-1, which goes from 0-62mph ( 0 – 99 kph) in just 2.3 seconds and can hit 100mph (160 kph) in less than five seconds. How long would it take for the remote controlled car to travel to your nearest Macdonald’s and return with fries at 62 mph and 100mph? Print out a map.

* Research the height and weight of 10 famous ballerinas and plot these statistics on a height Vs weight chart. Is there a mathematical pattern?

* If a kangaroo can hop at 25 kph (15.5 mph), how long would it take to hop across the middle of Australia E to W?

* Video of a pile of Lego sorting into a Venn Diag of shape, colour and bumps

* Fill a matchbox full of rice. How many grains? How many grains of rice to fill an Olympic swimming pool?

* Devise a way to simply measure the volume of a set of keys. (Go Archimedes Go)

* Toast the area of a piece of toast into the toast.

* Draw a simple picture of mathematician on graph paper. Write the co-ordinates of major points [eg. (2,5), (5, 7) etc] in order so that someone else can redraw the picture without seeing it. Test it.

* How many corn flakes are there in a 750gm box?

* Trap yourself inside a Matrix. Full points for most creative effort.

* Give a 3-minute humorous talk on why fractions are vulgar.

* Devise a method to calculate the speed of ants around your house or the school. Now calculate the time it would take for an ant to finish the 100m Olympic sprint.

* Demonstrate n! from n = 1 to n = 10 in Lego blocks

* Bring in an Abacus and demonstrate how you multiply 96 x 72.

* Find the minimum aeroplane seat width @ Seatguru for British Air, Qantas and American airlines. Now calculate how many seats these airlines could fit across your couch @ home.

*Rewrite the 12 Days of Christmas Carol with maths terms. Sing in woollie hat and scarf to class.

* Sing the 7 times table to the class Opera Style.

* There are 1,070 dimples on a golf ball. The diameter of a golf ball is 4.3 cm. How many dimples per square cm? The diameter of a tennis ball is 6.9 cm, how many dimples would fit on a tennis ball?

* How many slices of bread to cover your country? How many loaves? You will find size and links here. A pre-sliced loaf of supermarket bread is approx 10 cm by 11 cm.

* A large tube of toothpaste is 4.2 oz or 119 gm. What length of toothpaste squeezed in a straight line could you squeeze out of that tube?

* How much air is in an Aero? This can be calculated. By weight and by volume.

* How many 100s & 1000s or sprinkles or jimmies are there on average on top of a cup cake? Make an equation (That’s algebra, folks) using symbols made of sprinkles on cupcakes. Bring to class. They will be eaten.

* Rewrite Some of My Favourite Things from the sound of music using only maths terms. You can make clothes out of curtains or use old clothes and felt markers and whatever grabs your imagination to make a maths tie/skirt/shirt/hat to sing the song to the class.

* What is the probability that a peanut butter sandwich will land peanut butter if you get a fright and throw it in the air? Show trial numbers.

* How many channels can you surf in a 20 second period? If you had to get up off the couch, walk to the TV set, push a button and return to the couch, how long would it take to surf that many channels? Yeah! Like in the olden days.

* Make a complex tessellation using Cuisenaire rods or potato stamps you have carved. (Diagram below is not a tessellation but nice potato stamp art.)

A major fast food firm, all right, McDonald’s has put the entire Australian Year 7 – 12 Maths curriculum on line and it is FREE!!! #mce_temp_url#

I never thought I’d be enthusing over McAlgebra or McTrigonometry or McX, but this site has been recommended to me by maths teachers and it looks great. Students can view worked examples of maths problems, hear the problems solved step-by-step, work at their own pace and even track their progress through the website.

If the entire maths curriculum can be accessed for free on line what ARE maths teachers for?

Gather round mathspigs and I will tell you why we need maths teachers.

Maths is boooooring for the majority of students. It needs a maths teacher to breath fire into the concepts to make them interesting, relevant and exciting. Otherwise, students feel maths is on a par with re-translating the dead scrolls.

Mathspig’s mission is to provide maths teachers with fun, pop-culture based, media-savvy maths to excite students about the whole idea of maths. These topics can be used by maths teachers in the same way retailers use ‘loss leaders’. Get them in the door and you can sell ’em anything…. almost!!!!!!

Since maths teachers often moan about students not knowing their tables… here is a COOL MATHS GAME called

MATH LINES : X-FACTOR which is all about using your knowledge of tables …quickly. #mce_temp_url#

This is how I would use it in the classroom. Get this game up on the Smartboard and call kids up one at a time to have a go!!!!!! It’s fun.